Reddit to raise nearly $750 million in upcoming IPO

Reddit aims to raise up to $748 million as part of its upcoming IPO, in which the social media company is seeking a valuation of about to $6.5 billion.

The company plans to sell about 22 million shares between a range of $31 to $34 per share, according to a corporate filing released Monday.

Reddit has also set aside roughly 1.76 million shares for certain users and moderators, known as Redditors, who want to participate in the initial public offering and have created their user accounts before Jan. 1. These Redditors will be able to purchase those shares and then sell them when Reddit goes public as they won’t be subject to a lock-up period, which typically prevents investors from selling shares for six months after the IPO.

The company warned in its S-1 filing that Redditors who participate in its IPO “could result in increased volatility in the market price” of the company’s Class A common stock. Other companies that have gone public and allowed certain community members and others to participate in their IPOs via similar directed share programs, include Doximity, Rivian and Airbnb.

Reddit filed its IPO prospectus in February, and said it planned to go public on the New York Stock Exchange and trade under the ticker symbol “RDDT.”

Investors are closely watching Reddit’s upcoming IPO, which will be this year’s first major tech stock launch and the first social media IPO since Pinterest went public in 2019.

In 2021, Reddit filed a confidential draft of its public offering prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission. During that same year, Reddit raised $1.3 billion in a funding round and had a private market valuation of $10 billion, according to the deal-tracking service PitchBook.

Reddit’s annual sales in 2023 were $804 million, which was a 20% year-over-year increase from $666.7 million, according to the company’s S-1 filing. It also recorded a net loss of $90.8 million for 2023, which was narrower than the $158.6 million net loss it logged in 2022.

Some of the company’s notable shareholders include Tencent, Condé Nast’s parent company Advance Magazine Publishers and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who was a member of Reddit’s board of directors from 2015 to 2022.